


Diaspora

by redstapler



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Canonically Jewish Pines, Gen, High Holy Days, Jewish Pines Family, Stangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 01:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12223263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redstapler/pseuds/redstapler
Summary: The High Holy Days are a time for reflection. Even if you're not religious. Even if you're not in this dimension anymore.





	Diaspora

**Author's Note:**

> Shana Tovah and easy fast, everyone!
> 
> I realize this is some heavy stuff to write a fanfic about, but I can't see the Pines family in any way but through a Jewish lens. As both canonically Jewish characters, as characters created by a (presumably) secular Jew, and as a secular Jew myself, it's how this story exists. So here's my take on it.
> 
> Thanks to my betas, Equilibriumgirl, Healy, and The_Lionheart!

Ford is twelve years old and home sick when he figures out the conversation he needs to have. It’s about fifteen minutes later that he realizes this is probably the ideal time to have it: Stan’s at school, and Dad is downstairs in the shop. This is really more of a conversation to have with Ma, anyway. He shrugs on his robe, sticks his feet into his slippers and ambles into the kitchen where she’s doing the crossword over a gone-cold cup of coffee.

“What are you doing out of bed, baby? Come here, let me feel your forehead.”

Ford dutifully offers his forehead for testing, and she places the back of her hand to it.

“Do you think I’m still running a fever?”

“A little. Are you hungry at all? Maybe a cup of tea?”

“Tea would be nice, please.”

“Sit down, I’ll make us both some.”

Ma places her coffee cup in the sink, puts the kettle on, and takes down two more mugs. She picks the apple cinnamon tea she knows Ford likes and drops a bag in each mug. When the kettle whistles, she puts water in both, then returns to the table with them. She sits back down with a wary eye on her son. The psychic stuff was only mostly for show. Mostly.

“You look troubled, but not from being sick.”

Taking a deep breath, he just comes out with it.

“Ma, I think maybe, I mean, I can’t be sure...I don’t know if I think there’s a God.”

“That’s fine. But you and your brother are still getting Bar Mitzvahed next June.” She’s relieved, to be honest. All the trouble these two put her through, some garden variety agnosticism is small potatoes.

“But how can I take part in a religious ceremony if I don’t know if I believe in God? That feels like lying.”

“Sweetie, you think you’re the only Jew who questions that?”

Ford blinks, not realizing this could possibly be an idea other people had.

“I’m not?”

“Ford, there’s plenty of Jews who aren’t sure God exists. If that’s how you feel, you’re in good company. And yes, you and your brother still have to learn your Torah portion. Even agnostics get Bar Mitzvahed.”

This conversation isn’t going anywhere near how he thought it would, and he’s pleased. Even if it means he’ll still have to coach Stan through sight reading Hebrew for the next year. (He’d taught himself the aleph-bet in an afternoon, treating it like another secret code to crack.)

* * *

The Backupsmore Hillel house was pretty much the last place Ford ever thought he’d go, but here he is.

Fiddleford had gamely attempted to bring up religion earlier that week, and Ford found himself explaining the conversation he’d had with Ma when he was a kid. The concept of a religion that encouraged such an existential doubt was something Fiddleford had never considered. He later asked if Ford was still observant; he was not impressed when Ford said no.

“You should go to Hillel tomorrow night at the very least. No reason to turn down a free dinner, right?”

“Fidds, we never even did Shabbos when I was at home.”

“Yeah, but, _free food_.”

Ford’s broke college student sensibilities couldn’t argue with that.

* * *

Religion never meant a lot to Stanley.

It was the mezuzah on the door, the Yiddish sprinkled through his parents’ vocabulary, interminable services during the High Holy Days (but knowing how much worse off his more religious friends had it), and pretending not to eat pork when Ma’s parents were visiting. 

It was the stack of thank you notes he and Ford had been forced to write after their Bar Mitzvah, Ma standing over them like a hawk. (He could still see the pile of checks and pens from relatives they'd never met before and would never see again. His hand had ached the entire summer.)

It was grinding his teeth and weighing his options when he heard antisemitic terms being tossed around like they were nothing. (He’d figured out somewhere in central Pennsylvania that people didn’t clock him as Jewish, which meant he heard some pretty awful shit aimed at no one in particular. If it had actually been about anyone, Stan wouldn’t have hesitated to throw a punch.)

It meant each fall, eating a cut up stolen apple dipped in honey packets from a diner with some Wonder Bread just to feel even a moment of community again. Sometimes he was in a motel room, sometimes in his car. One memorable year, it was in the home of the lone rabbi of a small midwest town. (He’d seen Stan get kicked out of a coffee shop and heard him yell at the owner, his fury peppered with Yiddish vernacular outside the commonly known.) (Stan felt relief that for once, the apple wasn’t stolen, the honey was good local stuff from a glass jar, and the challah was freshly baked.)

It meant always feeling like Elijah, an empty chair at the tables of the family he’d been forced from. It was a lonely ache every spring and fall when he felt like he should be at seders.

When Stan got to Gravity Falls and moved into Ford’s house, he thought about getting a mezuzah for the back door. He needed all the help he could get, and really, there were worse traditions he could cling to than that one from his youth. He eventually decided against it.

Ford never went in for that superstitious mumbo jumbo anyway.

Every fall, he still stood in the kitchen and ate apples, honey, and Wonder Bread, though.

* * *

Years into his dimensional exile, Ford found himself in yet another town square, on yet another planet, in yet another dimension. He was startled when he realized the conversations he was hearing were a mix of Galactic pidgin and, no it can’t be...it was! _Yiddish_.

He hadn’t heard these words since he was a young man at his Zayde’s shiva. That was years before...well, about a year before he’d moved to Gravity Falls. He was pretty sure he’d seen some Hebrew written on the wall in a Manotaur’s cave, but beyond that…

Ford shook his head clear and took a better look around the marketplace he’d found himself in. He noticed the written language had some similarities to Hebrew. Between what he remembered from when he was a kid, and what he knew of Galactic Common, he was able to get his bearings quickly. A lot of it was Galactic written phonetically in Hebrew, which helped. He’d have been in trouble if it was the other way around.

Much to his delight, his arrival turned out to coincide with this culture’s iteration of Rosh Hashonah, and he was welcomed into the seder hosted by a local way house. He noted with amusement that the challah was made with quadrotriticale flour. The fruit wasn't quite apples, and they were dipped in something that wasn’t quite honey, but together they were tart and sweet, and it gave him a sense of hope he hadn’t had in a long time. When Ford realized the dimension in which he found himself was Dimension 36, he laughed himself sick. It was too perfect.

 _I guess Mel Brooks was right_ , he thought to himself, _there ARE Jews in space!_ This set him off on another giggle fit.

* * *

They visit Piedmont for Rosh Hashonah.

After some stunned reactions and confused looks, they sit down to dinner. It all feels shockingly normal, set against bizarre circumstances. Somewhere along the way, Ma’s cookbook had found its way into that Pines home, and the results taste achingly familiar to both men. There is no word in any language for missing the food cooked by a loved one long gone. (There should be.)

Stan distracts himself with the pun-filled prayers before each food.

Ford delights the family with his story of the seder he’d attended in space.

Both brothers are profoundly grateful to even be there.

* * *

The drive back to Oregon is long, and an interesting preview to being on the boat.

It's somewhere around the state line that Stan coughs.

“So uh. Yom Kippur’s next.” He pronounces it “kipper,” the way Dad had.

“Yes, I remember.”

Stan goes white knuckled on the steering wheel, trying to stick to his point and not yell at Ford for being a pompous ass. He clears his throat again and presses on.

“I’m still remembering stuff, but, uh. By all accounts, I owe a lot of people a lot of apologies, and I think the first person I owe one to is you. Obviously I can’t make up for any of--”

“Stan, stop.”

“Come on, Ford! Lemme just apologize like you’ve wanted me to the last thirty years!”

Silence stretches thickly for a moment.

“You never owed me an apology. I’m the one who needs to be forgiven.”

“What?”

“Stan, everything I blamed you for was never your fault. I’m sorry it took nearly losing you a third time to understand that.”

“Eh?”

“Stan, while I didn’t have the luxuries and wealth you accused me of having, and while I had my own struggles, I was never homeless. You were. Unlike you, I was never truly lost.”

“Except for those thirty years wandering lost in space.”

“Yes, well, that was different. I had a home, I was just separated from it. It was there for me when I returned, and I was welcomed, for all I uh, punched that welcome in the face. You had no such assurance. You didn’t have that knowledge to sustain you.”

“Eh, I got by.”

“Sure, but you shouldn’t have had to, and I’m very sorry for that. I should have been offering help with that postcard, not asking for it.”

“Mm.”

Stan drove on in silence for a bit.

“You know, you still haven’t thanked me.” It was too dark for Ford to see the cheshire cat grin on Stan’s face.

“Oh for the love of…”

“Kidding! Kidding. Jeez, if I said gullible was written on the ceiling, you’d look up!”

“You knucklehead.” Ford starts laughing, relieved to finally feel on even footing with his twin after so long.

“YOU knucklehead! Ugh, I’m beat. Let’s find a hotel or something.”

“Sounds good. Shanah Tovah, knucklehead.”

“Shanah Tovah, Poindexter.”

**Author's Note:**

> A few terms, for those not familiar:
> 
> Rosh Hashonah - Jewish New Year, observed in early fall
> 
> Yom Kippur - Jewish day of atonement, observed ten days after Rosh Hashonah
> 
> Mezuzah - A small, flat box containing a scroll with a prayer written on it that is placed on the doorway of Jewish homes. (You can see one on the doorway next to Pines Pawns in A Tale of Two Stans.)
> 
> Yiddish - A language that's a mix of Russian, German, and Hebrew, and probably other languages besides. Spoken by Jews throughout most of Europe, who brought it to America and wherever else they ended up.
> 
> Hillel House - A Jewish community found on most college campuses that is welcoming to Jews of all denominations.
> 
> Zayde - Grandfather
> 
> Shanah Tovah - Happy New Year
> 
> Dimension 36 - [36 is a lucky number in Hebrew.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_\(symbol\)#In_Jewish_culture)


End file.
